raspberryninja

Ahead of their actual debut, YG entertainment’s up and coming male idol group WINNER bagged their first advertising contract.

On January 17th, it was confirmed that WINNER will be exclusive endorsing for casual clothing brand, NII. Exclusive stills from their recent pictorial were also released. They were featured wearing colourful, character jumpers, styled in a trendy, casual concept. The first set of stills were taken from the brand’s spring collection.

A representative from the brand also revealed why they have selected WINNER as their newest ambassadors, stating that they wanted to reinvent their image with a fresh, youthful concept. They also commented on how the group was able to pull with the shoot despite being new to the industry.

WINNER is the latest artist to debut from YG Entertainment, after winning from the agency’s reality program “Who Is Next” late last year.

[스타뉴스 길혜성 기자] WINNER (with members Kang Seung Yoon, Lee Seung Hoon, Song Min Ho, Nam Tae Hyun and Kim Jin Woo), YG Entertainment’s first boy group since BIGBANG 8 years ago, is building the expectations in the music market with their enormous popularity even before their official debut.

WINNER, a group that will be making an official debut through one of the largest entertainment agencies in South Korea, YG Entertainment, are going to be featured in a reality TV series ‘WINNER TV’ to be aired for the first time on Dec 13 at 10 p.m. on Mnet. Thus the fans are given another chance to see them on TV.

On Dec 10 and 11, YG Entertainment revealed 2 versions of previews of ‘WINNER TV’ on their official blog and Naver at 0 hour. The previews are a sneak peek of the actual program, and they have raked in a sensational 300,000 viewers already on just the YG official channel on YouTube.

It is very rare for an idol group that has not even made their official debut to attract this many viewers in just a little bit more than one day with their previews, and not even with the actual program. Many are curious about WINNER already.

But this is not the first time where WINNER attracted such attention and popularity from fans not only from South Korea but from abroad as well.

‘WHO IS NEXT: WIN’, YG’s real survival program that was aired in October to show fierce battles between Teams A and B were where WINNER was formed, and Team A was the winning team. Now they will be making their debut soon, and are already arousing much attention even before officially becoming professionals.

At the ‘High Touch Event’ held in mid October by Teams A and B, in the midst of filming the real survival program WIN, attracted a whopping 3,000 fans. At a fan meeting conducted in November in Osaka Japan, 8,000 fans gathered to see the members, surprising staff members of YG Entertainment.

Currently WINNER are receiving countless offers from the advertising world as well. More than five major brands have asked WINNER to model in their ads already. Moreover, WINNER had the honor of being on Japanese newspaper when they performed for the opening stage of BIGBANG’s Dome Tour concerts.

In a survey conducted on an online community recently under the question “Who is the rising star of 2014?” more than half (57.8% with 15,722 votes out of 27,223) voted for WINNER, making them rank at the top.

Looking at WINNER’s achievement so far, it is hard to believe that they have not even made an official debut yet. There are no other groups who have achieved this much before officially making a debut in the South Korean music market.

WINNER is formed by members who have their own colors and talents, and apart from this, YG Entertainment helped carry out unique promotion like allowing them to perform at the opening stage of BIGBANG’s concerts—these all contributed greatly to WINNER’s already solid popularity.

This is why so many are keen to find out more about their debut date and ‘WINNER TV’, which will deliver new traces of WINNER members.

‘WINNER TV’ will be aired through Mnet every Friday from Dec 13 at 10 p.m. The program accommodates 10 episodes in total, and it will be part of a series of YG Star Production Projects, following ‘BIGBANG TV’ and ‘2NE1 TV’, which were very popular in the past.

‘WINNER TV’ will show the viewers every little detail after ‘WIN’ was finished. ‘WIN’ was a program that determined the formation of YG’s new group, and the result depended 100% on the viewers—which was Team A, with Song Min Ho, Kang Seung Yoon, Lee Seung Hoon, Kim Jin Woo, and Nam Tae Hyun.

‘WINNER TV’ will deliver everything from the process of working as official artists after winning the battles on ‘WIN’, performing in front of tens of thousands of fans in Japan for BIGBANG’s Japan 6 Largest Dome Tour opening stage, fan meeting with 8,000 Japanese fans and much more. The five members’ everyday lives including their vivacious and playful selves will be shown through the program as well.